The Prodigal Son (33 page)

Jacob’s sob recalled her to the present, and she bent to pick him up, allowing him to hide his face against her shoulder while she hid hers against his hair. She didn’t watch as the earth was shovelled back into place, but however hard she shut her eyes she couldn’t close out the sound.

“She lies well here.” Sandy’s voice interrupted Alex from where she was planting a rose by Rachel’s headstone. She slid him a look, keeping her back to him.

“You think? Personally I would prefer it if she were lying in her bed at night and running through her days.” She continued with her work, hoping he would have left by the time she was done, but he was still there when she got off her knees.

“You’ll have more lasses,” Sandy said, coming to stand beside her.

Alex slapped him. “Is that a comfort? Do you truly believe that I can replace Rachel with another child?”

Sandy rubbed at his reddening cheek, his eyes full of a compassion that she didn’t want to see in them. “Nay, of course not. Rachel was Rachel; wild and bonny and with the heart of a lion, rushing to her father’s defence. In many ways very like her mother.”

Alex dug her fingers into the flesh of her upper arms to stop herself from crying.

“You’ll never forget her, and nor will her da. All that knew her have been touched by her, by the little piece of God that lived in her.”

“God!” Alex spat. “What do I care about God? He let her die, didn’t he?” Shit; now she was crying again, and she was so tired of these damn tears, of how her chest hollowed out into a constant ache for her, for her Rachel.

“God does as well as he can, lass. But sometimes it might be a bit too much for him too.”

Alex gave him a surprised look. “So God is fallible?”

Sandy gave her a faint smile. “Nay, not as such. But mayhap overwhelmed by events…” He regarded her in silence for a while. “She’s with God now and that is not a bad thing.” His smile widened. “And she’ll make sure that heaven is somewhat livened up. Can you not see her, scurrying across the skies, chasing after an angel and asking why, why, why…”

Alex wiped at her eyes, half laughing, half crying at the notion of her wild, wayward girl turning the orderly existence of Heaven upside down.

“I don’t want her to be with God,” she said through her tears. “I want her to be here, with me. With me!” For the first time ever, Sandy touched her, holding her in a light embrace.

“I know that, aye? And so does God.”

“Matthew and I had argued before all this,” Alex said as they sat on the little bench under the rowan. “About God and all that stuff.”

“All that stuff?” Sandy sounded disapproving. Alex nodded and gnawed at her lip.

“I told him that if he was arrested, I’d kill the children and myself rather than risk that other fate.”

“That would be a terrible thing to do,” Sandy said.

“In my book it’s equally terrible for the father of four to risk his life and those of his children,” she said. “I have no intention of witnessing my man and my babies sold into permanent servitude before being dragged off somewhere else myself.” She stared off across the water meadow, tracking the narrow ribbon of water as it appeared and disappeared between stands of alders and hazels.

“Previously, all I’ve asked of him has been that he not put his home at risk and that he be careful. I know how important his faith is to him, and I don’t want to come between him and God. But this time I’m too scared, and this time I’ll insist he puts me first.” Because if he dies my heart will lie in splinters on the ground, she thought. “Am I a totally depraved person, do you think?”

Sandy raised his brows. “Nay, not totally,” he said drily. He patted her on her thigh. “God doesn’t want us to squander our lives; he has given us life that we live it to the full, that we rejoice at the miracles he populates the world with. The perfection of a dandelion, the cold nose of a dog, the magic colours of a sunset…” He looked at Rachel’s fresh grave and back at Alex. “You’re within your rights to ask him, but you’ve placed him in a difficult position; his God or his wife.”

Alex squirmed. She’d regretted her comment about their marriage the moment it had flown out of her mouth, and now it was too late to take it back.

“His wife will win – this time,” Sandy concluded. “I’ll talk to him.”

Chapter 28

“I leave on the morrow,” Sandy said, a couple of days after Rachel’s funeral.

“So soon?” Matthew frowned down at the little wooden figurine he was carving and slashed it in two. “I can’t get her face right, it’s as if she eludes me, hiding herself from me.”

“You’re trying too hard to remember.”

“I fear that I’ll forget what she looked like. In my head I can see her move, I can hear her laugh, but her face, the way her eyes would narrow when she was planning something she shouldn’t be doing… I know what she looked like, but I can’t see her!” He picked up a new piece of wood, and notched his knife through it, creating a rough outline of a running, faceless lass. “She would still be here, if it weren’t for me, she would still be alive.”

He saw Sandy’s grimace; for the last few days his friend had tried to move him away from this self-flagellation, but it was true, wasn’t it? His lass died in his defence. His hand shook, the knife sank too deep, and Matthew swore. Sandy’s hand on his arm forced him to put the piece of wood down.

“Wait some weeks and then try,” Sandy said.

They walked together up to the millpond, talking in low voices about the present conflict.

“It will get worse, won’t it?” Matthew said.

Sandy sighed. “Aye, I think it will. Scotland will be an unwelcoming place for many years to come. Strife, famine, more strife…” His eyes glazed over. “We’ll be trod underfoot, our Highland brothers unleashed on us and we unleashed on them…” He shook himself like a wet dog. “She’s right at times, your foreign wife. We’ve been intolerant toward others and now we’re reaping what we have sown. God’s punishment, one might think.” He chuckled to himself. “But you must not tell her that, I wouldn’t want her to think me going soft.” He looked around at the greening shrubs and smiled down at an early windflower, bending down to pluck it. “God won’t think less of you for staying away.”

“Staying away?” Matthew looked at him warily.

“You heard; Alex told me she fears you’ll be led into a trap.”

Had she told him everything, her awful threat as well?

Sandy nodded that she had. “She’s a woman. She sets the safety of her offspring first, as she should. Women are weak and must be protected and cared for, they aren’t as spiritually resilient as a man is, and we must forgive them when they play out the single most powerful card they have; their love for us.” He laughed at Matthew’s face, elbowing him hard. “Aye I know; she wouldn’t agree that women are weak.”

“Nay, and she could prove it to you,” Matthew muttered, seeing a rather entertaining image of Alex kicking Sandy hard enough to send him flying. He wondered if she still could do that; he hadn’t seen her practising for well over a year. Sandy did not seem unduly worried, rather the reverse. He gave Matthew a fond look.

“She loves you.”

Matthew kicked at the dried leaves underfoot, muttering that he wasn’t all that sure of that – not lately.

“You’re a wee fool at times. She loves you so much that a life without you would be a living death.” He clapped Matthew on the back. “God will forgive; this year you’ll do as she says and stay away.”

Matthew felt a physical relief at his words, his shoulders dropping down from their constant tenseness for the first time in weeks.

Once they were settled on the makeshift bench by the millpond, Matthew turned the conversation to his suspicions regarding Mrs Brown.

“You think?” Sandy frowned down at the water.

“Aye I do.” Too many coincidences, and then Mrs Brown slipping so discreetly through the door to the temporary barracks.

“But why?” Sandy said. “Tom Brown is a man of staunch faith. Would his wife be acting for her own reasons, do you think?”

“I don’t know. You know them much better than I do, just as you know the brother.”

“John? Aye, John I know very well. He wouldn’t betray me.” Sandy sucked in his cheeks, looking very much like a narrow faced trout. “Ah, well,” he said, slapping himself on the thighs. “First we must make sure. Then we find out why.” He looked rather grim. “It better be a good why.”

That evening they sat in the kitchen for a long time after supper had been cleared away. The early March evening hung pale outside the window, a promise of light returning to the land.

“Beautiful, isn’t it? The world is at its best at twilight, day still stands visible and the shadows of the night are merely tinting the ground. It’s a hazy magical moment, an instant of quiet perfection, of balance between light and dark,” Alex said, clasping her hands around a mug of chamomile tea. “When I die, I want it to be at twilight,” she added in a whisper, so low Matthew had to strain his ears to hear her.

“Not yet, aye?” He wanted to take her hand, but didn’t know if he dared. Instead he stood, said something about seeing to the beasts and walked outside.

“You must help your man,” Sandy said as he prepared to leave. “Matthew is being eaten alive by guilt; guilt that it was for his sake she came running, guilt that he made a scene over the horse, guilt that he has failed you. And he fears that you won’t forgive him.”

“Forgive him?” Alex sneezed, blew her nose and tucked the handkerchief back up her sleeve.

Sandy gave her a penetrating look. “You blame him just as much as he blames himself.” He bowed in her direction and stepped outside into the night where Matthew was waiting to walk with him part of the way.

Alex stood in the doorway and watched them leave, and in her depths something was telling her he was right; she did blame Matthew, and that wasn’t fair.

The next morning Matthew was gone when Alex woke, and when he came in for breakfast he had a harried look in his face that stopped her from initiating any kind of conversation. He had fields to plant, and he was taking Mark and Ian along to help. Alex nodded and promised to send Sarah up with dinner to the fields.

Late in the afternoon both boys tumbled back inside, dirty and tired but with the contented expression of someone who had worked hard all day and knew himself to deserve his rest.

“And your father?” Alex asked in passing, flipping yet another pancake into the air.

“He said he would be in later,” Mark said through his full mouth. “He said to tell you not to wait up.”

“Ah,” Alex said.

It was yet another beautiful evening when Alex walked out in search of her husband. She’d made an effort, changing to a clean bodice and combing her hair into the soft bun she knew he liked. She was nervous, wiping her palms down her skirts, and when she finally found him, in the stables, she stood for a long time in the shadows watching him. There was a slight curve to his shoulders and she felt a twinge of shame at having lumbered him with all the blame, leaving him to carry this staggering burden alone.

He was talking to Ham – at least that was what she thought at first – but once she began to listen, she heard that he was talking to himself of his wee lass, his Rachel. Her heart went out to him; Rachel was the child that always made him smile, the girl born as a confirmation that he had made it out, safe and alive, after his time as a slave on that accursed plantation, Suffolk Rose.

Her hand on his back made him jump. He tried to wipe his eyes, but she took hold of his chin, forcing him round to face her. She used her sleeve to blot his face, rested her hands on his cheeks, his hair. Her fingers smoothed their way across his brow, they touched his lips, his eyes.

“It wasn’t your fault,” she said, hearing just how much her voice wobbled. “Of course it wasn’t. Forgive me if I’ve been letting you feel that it was.”

He fell back against the wall of the stall and for the first time since Rachel died they stood with their arms around each other and cried for the child they’d lost, the girl who had been given such a brief allotted time on Earth.

“Bath,” she said once they had stopped crying. “Bath and food.”

“Food first, I think,” he said, patting himself on his rumbling stomach.

They walked hand in hand back to the kitchen. He sat by the table and talked while she made him pancake after pancake. Of small things mainly, like how he’d found an abandoned fox pup on the furthest rye field, and how Ian had made him and Mark laugh by showing off Aragorn’s antics. He told her that he’d seen an osprey, a huge bird floating high above the river, and at her doubtful expression huffily went on to explain that they were not that far from the sea, were they? It was relaxing, this rambling chit-chat, and when she took him by the hand and led him off towards the laundry shed it was almost like it used to be.

“Alex! Ow! Those are my balls. They’re supposed to remain attached to my body.” He clamped his thighs round her hand. “I’ll wash myself there, why don’t you busy yourself with my feet?” He stuck out a large foot and wiggled his toes. She snorted but moved over to scrub his extremities.

“You must let it scab,” she said when he stood. She patted him carefully over his chest. “No more picking at it, have you got any idea how much work it is to get blood stains out?” She gave him a faint smile. “What? You think I hadn’t noticed?”

He mumbled something about not being all that sure.

Alex shook her head at him, and pointed him in the direction of the closest bench.

“I spoke to Sandy,” Matthew said into the blanket as she massaged his back.

“No! And there was me thinking that you spent hours and hours together in absolute silence.” She dug her fingers into the trigger points along his right shoulder blade, making him hiss and tense before he relaxed back down. “I spoke to him too,” she said, pouring some more oil into her hands before attacking his buttocks.

“Aah!” he groaned. “Are you sure it’s supposed to hurt?”

“Wimp, lie back down or I’ll show you hurt, okay?”

“Okay, okay.”

She smiled; all her family used ‘okay’.

“So what did he say?” she asked, once Matthew began to grunt in appreciation rather than pain.